The Kent Looking After Literacy initiative for children in public care was a partnership venture between The Who Cares? Trust, the National Literacy Association and Kent County Council (KCC), funded by the Colyer Fergusson Charitable Trust. Children in public care typically experience changes of school, changes of home location, generally unsettled domestic circumstances, stressful life experiences, social exclusion, and educational underachievement, usually manifesting itself in, for example, literacy difficulties and leaving school with few or no qualifications (Evans, 2000; Fletcher-Campbell and Archer, 2003; Department of Health, 2003). The Kent Looking after Literacy initiative, which ran from 2002 to 2003, sought to raise the literacy attainment of a number of children in foster care in Kent and to offer support to their foster carers.

Children involved in the initiative were aged nine to 14 years, settled or fairly settled in their placement, and 'behind with their literacy' as reported by their teachers and/or foster carers and therefore in need of additional support with reading. Foster carers and children 'signed up' to the project via a project agreement.

Intervention children were given a PSION hand-held computer with introductory training on its use, and books and book tokens at the outset and during the project. The intervention included monthly home visits from a project visitor, who kept visit records, and Reading Passports to record views on books read. Reading roadshows also sought to raise awareness of the project aims, objectives and methods.

Our evaluation of the initiative explored children's achievement in basic literacy skills over the course of the project, possible attitude change among both children and their carers, and the aspects of the intervention that were most effective. Data collection for the evaluation utilised quantitative and qualitative measures; pre and post-project tests in reading, spelling, and comprehension; pre and post-project questionnaires on children's and carers' attitude to reading; and ongoing monitoring. A number of illustrative individual case studies were compiled.

Of the final total of 58 children involved in the project, the mean standard scores as a group improved to a statistically significant degree: in reading accuracy by 11 points, in spelling by 8 points, and in reading comprehension by 12 points.
Only three children's reading accuracy scores did not improve. We did not find any gender effects on any aspect of the project. Similarly, the length of time with the present carer had no significant effect on the children's reading accuracy, spelling or comprehension or on the gains made on any of these measures. Giving children books was highly valued as reported by the children and the carers. There was limited and inconsistent use of the PSION and children's attitudes to the PSION and its relevance to them were ambivalent.

The project had most beneficial effect with the group of children whose pre-project test scores were in the lower average (75-90 WORD standard scores) range. Conversely, the project had least effect on the children who had more significant literacy difficulties and/or who had above average test scores at the outset of the project.

There was a significant correlation between the carers' seeing children read and the post-project test scores on all of the WORD Test measures. That is, children who were observed reading by their carers showed signs of improvement in reading.

Despite the various methodological limitations of the evaluation, such as the lack of a control group and a variable post-intervention response rate, the findings are a sound and robust basis on which to offer a number of conclusions and pointers to further literacy intervention initiatives for children in public care. In keeping with requirements for each child in public care to have a Personal Education Plan as well as the requirement for a designated teacher in each school with responsibility for children in care, there is considerable potential for increased and improved inter-agency co-operation in such initiatives.

The full report concludes with a set of recommendations under the headings of policy, strategy and practice; offers a blueprint for literacy intervention programmes; and outlines, diagrammatically, roles and responsibilities of those involved in setting up, running and reviewing such programmes.

References

Department of Health (2003) Outcome Indicators for Looked after Children, 12 months to September 30, 2002, England.
R. Evans (2000) The Educational Attainments and Progress of Children in Public Care, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Institute of Education, University of Warwick.
F. Fletcher-Campbell and T. Archer (2003) The Achievement at Key Stage 4 of young people in Public Care, Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.

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